Breakdown of В кафе продают горячие булочки.
кафе
cafe
горячий
hot
продавать
to sell
булочка
bun, small sweet roll
Questions & Answers about В кафе продают горячие булочки.
Why is the verb продают in the 'they' form if the English translation says 'The cafe sells'?
In Russian, it sounds more natural to say 'In the cafe, [they] sell' rather than making the cafe itself the subject doing the selling. Using the third-person plural verb продают without a pronoun like они is a very common way to make a general or impersonal statement, similar to saying 'hot buns are sold' in English.
Why doesn't the word кафе change its ending after the preposition в?
The word кафе is a borrowed foreign noun and is indeclinable in Russian. Even though it is technically in the prepositional case here to indicate a location, its form never changes regardless of the grammatical case.
Why does the adjective горячие end in -ие instead of the standard plural ending -ые?
This is due to a fundamental Russian spelling rule. After the letter ч (as well as г, к, х, ж, ш, щ), you can never write the letter ы. Therefore, the standard plural ending changes from -ые to -ие.
What case is горячие булочки in, and why?
It is in the accusative case because it is the direct object receiving the action of the verb продают. Because a bun is an inanimate object, its accusative plural form looks exactly identical to its nominative plural form.